The present invention relates generally to implantable medical devices, and more particularly to an implantable interventional device such as an antitachycardia pacemaker, a cardioverter, a defibrillator, or a device having a combination of such functions, adapted to deliver electric in, pulse or shock therapies to the patient's heart upon detection of a ventricular tachycardia (VT) or ventricular fibrillation (VF). More particularly, the invention relates to improvements in apparatus and methods for detecting and distinguishing pathological tachycardias from physiological tachycardias and for establishing the type and timing of the delivery of the appropriate therapy upon detection of pathologic VT or VF.
Sinus heart rates in normal healthy adults may range upward to 160 beats per minute (bpm) during physical activity or exercise, or even when the individual is experiencing emotional stress or excitement. Rates up to even 200 bpm may be experienced during strenuous exercise. Such elevated rates occurring in these circumstances are a normal reaction by the organism and are termed physiological tachycardias. The heart rate gradually, perhaps even quickly, decreases to the normal resting rate when the factors leading to the increased rate have ceased.
In contrast, random or spontaneous elevation of the heart rate to such levels for no apparent reason constitutes pathological tachycardia attributable to cardiovascular disease, and requires intervention with appropriate medical therapy. In general, pathological tachycardia in the atrium is tolerated because the excitable A-V junction tissue (between the atrium and ventricle) has a longer refractory period and slower conductivity than myocardial tissue, so that the rapid atrial contractions typically fail to induce correspondingly rapid ventricular contractions, allowing cardiac output to remain relatively strong with a ventricular rhythm nearer the sinus rate.
On the other hand, pathological tachycardia in the ventricles, the main pumping chambers of the heart, is not well tolerated. The rapid contractions permit only partial filling of the chambers with oxygenated blood and result in diminished cardiac output. Moreover, ventricular tachycardia (VT) tends to accelerate spontaneously to ventricular fibrillation (VF), in which synchronous contractions of the tissue cease and the myocardial contractions become random and uncoordinated. The resulting loss of cardiac output requires immediate intervention to defibrillate, failing which death will ensue. Generally, VF occurs only after VT; only rarely is VF not precipitated by a pathological tachycardia.
Although atrial tachycardia (AT) is relatively common, patients who are symptomatic or at high risk may be treated with drugs, antitachycardia pacemakers, or in some extreme cases, such as where the AT tends to escalate to atrial fibrillation (AF), by performing a surgical A-V block and a ventricular pacemaker implant. Antitachycardia pacemakers, which often are also prescribed for patients suffering VT, are usually adapted to overstimulate the heart by applying pulses at a programmed rapid rate to suppress the ectopic activity that leads to premature atrial or ventricular contractions. Pulses of relatively low energy content may suffice to break the tachycardia and restore normal heart rate. The term "cardioversion" usually implies delivery of higher energy electrical shocks to the heart to break the tachycardia. Unfortunately, both antitachycardia and cardioversion therapies which are used for terminating VT can contribute to acceleration into VF.
Defibrillators are employed to apply one or more high energy electrical shocks to the heart in an effort to overwhelm the uncoordinated contractions of the various sections of the myocardial tissue and reestablish organized spreading of action potentials from cell to cell, thereby to restore synchronized contractions of the ventricles. Automatic implantable defibrillators were described in the literature at least as early as 1970, in separate articles of M. Mirowski et al. and J. Schuder et al. Innovations since proposed have included automatic implantable defibrillators which perform multiple functions of antitachycardia, cardioversion and defibrillation, and where appropriate, demand bradycardia pacing. In general, the desire is to use one or more pulse sequence or low level shock therapies for breaking VT before it spontaneously progresses into VF, and, if that fails or if VF occurs without preliminary pathologic tachycardia, to resort to a high energy defibrillating shock.
Typically, the shocks are delivered from one or more output storage capacitors of sufficient capacity in the implanted device. Energy requirements generally range from as little as 0.05 joule to up to 10 joules for cardioversion, and from 5 joules to about 40 joules for defibrillation, depending on the patient, the nature of the electrical waveform applied, and the efficiency of the energy transfer through the electrodes and into the heart tissue. The capacitors must be charged to the level appropriate for the therapy when the dysfunction or dysrhythmia is detected, so that the energy required for the shock will be rapidly available for delivery. Multiphasic shocks have been found quite effective. It is customary to provide a preset delay between successive shocks, and to inhibit further shocks when return to normal rhythm is detected.
As used in this specification, the terminology "shock" or "shocks" may include any pulse-type waveform, whether single phase or multiphase, which is delivered as antitachycardia, cardioverting or defibrillating therapy to a patient's heart in an effort to break, interrupt or terminate pathologic tachycardia or fibrillation and return the pumping action of the heart to a rate in the normal range; and "interventional device" includes any antitachycardia pacemaker, cardioverter, defibrillator or other device or combination thereof (which may include the function of conventional bradycardia pacing) which is adapted to be implanted or otherwise worn by a human or animal subject for the purpose of intervening to deliver shocks to the heart in response to detection of an abnormally rapid heart rate. The waveform is not limited to any particular energy content or range of energy content, and indeed, the therapy may include burst stimulation or other conventional techniques for applying stimulation pulses (such as for rapid pacing) to break a VT.
Proper operation of implantable antitachycardia pacemakers, cardioverters, defibrillators and similar medical devices necessitates proper timing of delivery of the therapy, including timing of charging and firing of shock-producing output capacitors. It is essential, first, that the device have the capability to distinguish physiological tachycardias from pathological tachycardias to assure that occurrence of the former will not be wrongly identified as the latter with the result that the patient is subjected to a shock when he or she is merely exercising, for example. Incapability to distinguish can mean, at the very least, that the capacitors are needlessly charged, and worse, that they are inappropriately discharged into the heart, with consequences ranging from painful shock and possible loss of consciousness to repetitive shocks.
In copending U.S. patent application Ser. No. 07/863,092 filed Apr. 3, 1992, ("the '092 application"), of which this application is a continuation-in-part, and which is incorporated herein by reference, physiological and pathological tachycardias are distinguished by resort to the use of two independent sensors, one of which detects electrocardiogram (ECG) or intrinsic electrical heart activity and the other, physical exercise by sensing activity. The latter sensor may be termed a complementary sensor, which, in the preferred embodiment of the invention disclosed in that application, is an accelerometer for detecting patient activity directly, but which instead might be an indirect sensor of physical exercise of the patient, such as blood pressure, blood oxygen content, minute ventilation, central venous temperature, pulse rate, or blood flow detector. Concurrent detection of patient cardiac activity (ECG) as well as physical activity provides improved discrimination between physiologic and pathologic tachycardias, particularly in an overlap range of heart rates from about 130 to about 180 beats per minute (bpm). This range presents especially serious problems when ECG detection alone is used and/or the patient may be experiencing either a fast physiological tachycardia or a relatively slow pathological VT.
For example, the ECG signal may indicate a VT of 150 bpm which is in the range of both pathologic and physiologic tachycardia for a particular patient, but if the activity status sensor (e.g., accelerometer) detects physical activity, the device would be inhibited from delivering antitachycardia treatment. On the other hand, the ECG may demonstrate VT or VF at a time when the activity status sensor indicates no movement of the patient, leading to the decision to trigger prompt therapy. The decision, therefore, is a reasoned one and is made automatically, and in the case of origin of a tachycardia, discriminates between physiologic and non-physiologic.
An implantable medical interventional device utilizing the complementary sensors may be programmed to respond to sensing an ECG signal indicative of possible slow VT, coupled with confirmation of physical inactivity of the patient by the other sensor, by stimulating the heart with low energy shocks to break the VT before it accelerates into VF. Alternatively, a more liberal programming philosophy may be followed in which slow tachycardia and lack of physical activity of the patient merely define an alert condition of the device in which the capacitors are charged to the proper energy level, in anticipation of the possibility that a more dramatic situation may develop. If delivery of an antitachycardia or defibrillating shock is subsequently determined to be warranted, precious time will not have been lost waiting for the output storage capacitors of the device to be charged.
The use of two complementary sensors serves not only to control charging and firing of the implantable interventional device for treatment of tachycardias and fibrillation, but to better evaluate the probability of success of interventional measures. Since VT may be broken by lower energy shocks than those needed to terminate VF, a considerable energy saving is achieved which helps to reduce the size of the battery and, consequently, of the implanted device itself, or to increase its lifetime with the same battery capacity, either of which is important to the development of self-powered implanted devices.
Numerous conventional electrical waveform therapies or therapy protocols may be programmed into the interventional device for selective application to the heart upon detection of an applicable cardiac event by the complementary sensors. For example, these may include single stimulating pulses, stimulating pulse sequences, stimulating pulse trains of variable repetition frequency, one or more bursts of stimulating pulses, and single phase or multiple phase shocks of variable energy content generally greater than the energy content of the pulses in the other protocols which are utilized for treatment. In general, the therapy is applied in successively more stringent protocols until it is successful to break the VT or VF. This is termed a "tiered" therapy.
Both the degree of difficulty to defibrillate and the likelihood of failure increase with the length of time that the patient is in fibrillation. It is crucial to reduce the time interval from onset of fibrillation to delivery of the initial shock to a minimum, to reduce the energy required to defibrillate the heart and to increase the opportunity to successfully resuscitate the patient. As pointed out above, it is considerably easier to interrupt a VT, which may require delivery of only one joule of electrical energy, than to terminate VF with the potential requirement of 15 joules or more in each shock. Correspondingly, resuscitation is much more achievable with a patient who has been in fibrillation for only a few seconds than if the attack has continued for several minutes. Prompt treatment is also important for the patient experiencing either VT or VF and fighting against loss of consciousness. An excessive interval from onset to delivery of therapy, e.g., ten to thirty seconds, may cause the patient to faint, whereas earlier intervention might well have allowed the circulatory system to compensate for the fast heart rate without the loss of consciousness.
This type of dual sensing helps the implanted programmable microprocessor-based interventional device to better interpret and distinguish tachycardias than the ECG criteria which typically has been used in prior art devices, such as heart rate, morphology of the ECG, sudden onset, rate stability, etc. At least in pan this is because the activity status sensor is complementary, providing additional information concerning the cardiac event under scrutiny, rather than merely pan of the ECG criteria. As noted in the '092 application, improved discrimination is especially pronounced in the borderline region from 130 bpm to 180 bpm, thereby better avoiding needless, painful and debilitating shocking of the heart.
It is a principal object of the present invention to provide improvements in techniques for recognizing abnormal tachycardias, over the prior an and even that disclosed in the '092 application, particularly in the overlap or borderline region where pathological tachycardias had been virtually indistinguishable from physiological tachycardias.